The Morea team is happy to inform you of several updates to the user interface:

• The themes have been updated to use the latest release of Bootstrap (3.3.1).

• Morea themes are based on Bootswatch. We have incorporated two new Bootswatch themes into Morea: paper and sandstone.

• In response to user request, we have created four new themes based upon cerulean: cerulean_green, cerulean_brown, cerulean_purple, and cerulean_red. If you like cerulean, but are tired of blue, try one of these!

• To save space in the NavBar for additional menu items, we have removed the "Home" link and made the site title in the NavBar into a link.

• Also in response to user request, we have made the icons in the module page into links to their corresponding module. Apparently everyone wants to click on them, so we might as well let them.

To use these features, set the basic-template as an upstream repository and merge into your master branch. You can do this using the morea-merge-upstream script.

Note that you may well get merge conflicts, but these should be easy to address.

If the merge conflict involves changes to the "Qux" module that you've deleted in your site, do the following to re-delete the directory:

% cd master/src/morea
% git rm -r qux

If the merge conflict involves changes to your master/src/css/style.css file, or master/src/_layouts/default.html file, then simply view those files in your editor, edit to resolve the conflict and remove the conflict indicator lines, and save your changes.

Happy course design in 2015 and don't hesitate to let us know if you encounter problems with these enhancements.

The Morea Framework now has its own tag (morea-framework) on StackOverflow.

Please use StackOverflow for technical support questions, and the Morea Framework GitHub Issues.

The morea-framework tag is monitored, so you should get a response to your query within a day.

Users have reported problems installing Ruby and Jekyll under Windows 8. We have created a Vagrant "box" that simplifies the process of running a virtual Unix environment on Windows with Python, Ruby, git, and Jekyll pre-installed.

The Morea generator now allows you to create markdown files inside the morea/ directory with the extension .markdown. These files are processed into HTML by Jekyll, but will not appear as a module, outcome, reading, experience, or assessment. This is useful for creating (for example) quizzes in markdown format that are kept with other module files.

For more details, see the non-morea markdown section of the user guide.

To obtain this update, run the morea-merge-upstream.sh script.

The latest version of basic-template contains an update to the MoreaGenerator.rb file which now ignores any directories inside the morea/ directory named _ignore. This allows you to store private data inside the morea/ directory if you (for example) which to associate tests or other files with the module.

For more details, see the private data section of the user guide.

To obtain this update, run the morea-merge-upstream.sh script.

The original QuickStart procedure directed you to fork the basic-template repository in order to initialize your own course website.

Unfortunately, GitHub does not allow forks of public repositories (like basic-template) to be made private.

The QuickStart page has now been modified to avoid the use of forking. Course repositories created using the new procedure can be made private.

The Morea team is delighted to announce the 1.0 release. This release constitutes a "minimum viable product" with sufficient functionality and documentation for users to begin building their own course websites using the framework.

To use these features, set the basic-template as an upstream repository and merge into your master branch.